Rae’s Rules to Remember #58: You Need to Vote

When the presidential race first started, I supported Bernie Sanders. Out of all of the options I truly felt that he was the best. Now that he’s out of the race, I’ve had to jump on the Hillary bandwagon. Of course, I’m all for having the first female president… I just didn’t want it to be her. She’s not the perfect candidate, but I have to accept the fact that she’s better than Trump.

Donald Trump making it this far in the election has basically shown that anyone can run for president, and that no real political experience or knowledge is necessary. This is not okay. As a woman of color from a lower middle class background, a feminist, and an ally, I cannot (in any way) justify voting for Trump.

Let’s be honest here. He’s not brave and he doesn’t “tell it like it is.” He’s an overprivileged, racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic bigot.

Let’s start with the platform that his campaign is running on: Make America Great Again. When was America really great? I mean, where we are now is really the greatest it’s been (which isn’t even that good). If we take a look at the past… there’s the lack of women’s rights, The Great Depression, segregation, the slaughter of thousands of Native Americans, the recession, and slavery (just to name a few)….. Are we supposed to go back to that? Is that where this country’s “greatness” lies? If so, there’s a serious problem. It’s 2016 people. We should be moving forward, not backward.

He’s also incredibly anti-Muslim. He wants to prevent all Muslims from entering the country because he doesn’t know the difference the majority of Muslim people and radical extremists. Doesn’t understand that Muslims are also killed by ISIS and that you can’t let a small percentage of a group represent everyone in the community. Some people have said he reminds them of Hitler for goodness sake? Why would anyone want to elect him?

Another thing that I don’t like about him is that he supports “stop and frisk.” Something that was ruled unconstitutional because – surprise, surprise – most of the people being stopped were black or Latinx. This is a form of racial profiling, something that should not be supported! He’s even said that he supports racial profiling of people who “look suspicious” …because that doesn’t perpetuate any racial biases.. All that does is increase the divide between law enforcement and the community because a lot of times “looking suspicious” can translate to “not being white.” Then he goes on the say that the reason that people aren’t profiling is because they’re trying too hard to be politically correct. No. It’s not about being politically correct. People who use that argument fail to realize that there’s a difference between political correctness and just not being a bigot. He asked the African American community what we “had to lose” in voting for him, but really? By saying that we’re living in poverty, our schools are no good, we have no jobs, and that the majority of our youth is unemployed does NOT give us a reason to vote for you. If you want to convince us to vote for you, then why don’t you tell us how you’re going to fix all of these problems. And on top of that, he delivered that speech to a majority white crowd in a town that is 93% white. So much for outreach.

It’s not just the black community that he’s called out. He also wants to build a wall, between us and Mexico…..and thinks Mexico is going to pay for it. This is one of the things that he has been saying since the beginning of his campaign, However, after he visited Mexico, he claimed that it was never discussed who would pay for this wall (the president of Mexico says otherwise). He can’t even keep his story straight. He thinks that mass deportation is somehow feasible, and we can’t forget the time that he said that Latinx immigrants were criminals and rapists. I mean really? The man doesn’t even know thatMexican isn’t a language.

Trump would be terrible for the LGBTQIA+ community. Even if he claims to support the community, he chose a running mate who doesn’t. It is clear that Mike Pence is NOT for this community, so how can Trump be if this is who he chose to go into office with? Apparently he’s also in support of North Carolina’s HB2 law, which basically says that discrimination is okay.

I did a previous post on Trump’s sexism which is linked below, but to add to that, he called a former pageant contestant “disgusting” and literally told people to “check out” her sex tape. Super classy. Of course, he thinks that he disproves claims of sexism by hiring a female campaign manager, but she’s no better. Kellyanne Conway claimed that rape would not exist if women were physically stronger. Um…no. First of all, women are not the only victims of rape. Second, rape would not exist if people weren’t fucking rapists.The only person to blame for a rape is the person who commits that crime.

Not enough proof that Trump is an unfit candidate? Just take a look at a few of the things that he said or did while making a fool out of himself during the debate:

Claimed that Hillary’s commercials painted him in false light despite the fact that it contains literal audio of his speeches

Said our jobs are leaving and need to be brought back and then later talked about how he built businesses in Europe

Believes that one million dollars is a “small loan”

Was in favor of the housing market collapse in which many people lost their money and their homes. Called it “business”

Claimed that he never said that climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese when there are screenshots of the tweet from his official account

Said that he never called women pigs, dogs, or any other name when there’s video of it

Interrupted Hillary 22 times in 26 minutes and the few times she interfered in what he was saying got extremely upset

Interrupted and was disrespectful to the moderator

Literally said that Hillary could just be blamed for everything

Said tax evasion was “smart”

Shouted at Hillary that he has a better temperament than her and she needs to have some control

Seriously?

I don’t understand how anyone could possibly believe that this was a good idea and more importantly, I can’t believe that people support him.

I know that a lot of people aren’t happy with the candidate options here. Neither am I. But this is not the time to say, “I don’t like either of them so I just won’t vote.”

Now is not the time for “protest votes.”

Now is not time to vote for the Green Party.

You need to vote in the primary and even though I’m not too happy about it either, you need to vote for Hillary. Trump has already gained too much support and if you want to keep him out of the White House then you need to cast the right vote.